… Taking a vacation as an able-bodied person takes planning, but as a quadriplegic, well, it is way more complicated! …

I wasn’t quite sure where to start. In the past I would just find a cheap plane ticket, a cheap hotel, pack a bag and be on my way. Clearly life is not so easy anymore with respect to planning after you break your neck. There are so many things to consider, such as:

Who is going to take care of you when you’re down there

How accessible are the rooms? Can you get in the bathroom? Is the bed too high

Is the city handicap accessible

How on earth are you going to fit so many supplies in your suitcase for emergency

When I was strolling along the Art Deco streets of South Beach with my boyfriend this past month while on vacation in Miami I stumbled across one of my old stomping grounds … A beat up Irish pub called the Playwright where I would love to dance and get into trouble. I couldn’t resist popping in for memory sake when a flashback hit me of an experience I had with a gorgeous man in a wheelchair.

Beautiful South Beach

I must have been 24 years or so when I was out late one night and I spotted this beautiful man sitting at a table with his friends. I’ve always been the type of person to go up to random people and start talking to them. I walked over to the table, took a seat, and decided to strike up a conversation with the group. They happened to be from Australia and I have always been a sucker for Australian accents.

I took my first adventure vacation after 7 years over the last three weeks to my old stomping grounds in Miami to visit friends, family, and just generally embark on a mission to play. I had not taken a vacation for years as I was dealing with one medical disaster after another year after year. To be honest, I had forgotten what it was like to have fun for more than a few hours on the weekend.

I planned this trip last year, but due to caregiving challenges the trip kept getting postponed and postponed. I started to lose hope that I would ever take this trip when I finally decided to bite the bullet and go for it in September. I was slightly anxious because I did not know how things would go with respect to sleeping on a new mattress, running into further medical issues away from home, planning who would go down with me to take care of me, how my body would handle being up for more than 12 hours a day, the list goes on and on.

I worked myself up into a frenzy four weeks before the trip and to top it off I ran into further caregiving issues, which left me with my mom and boyfriend to accompany me down to paradise. I was unsure how the dynamics of my mom & boyfriend taking care of me would work as it was the first time in seven years I would not be taking a caregiver with me. To top it off, while my mom is the most young & fit 71-year-old I know, I was concerned it may be too much for her. The list of anxieties that ran through my head prior to the trip was overwhelming. Most people go on a vacation to unwind, but prior to my trip I just could not see how I was going to do this.

I had not realized over the last seven years how much anxiety and fear had built up within me on a daily basis with respect to thinking about 1,000 things that could go wrong being paralyzed on a daily basis. Many of my other quadriplegic friends deal with similar struggles as I do, but many of them seem to just go with the flow. My body is particularly sensitive with respect to pressure sores, broken bones, etc. that had literally forgotten how to unwind. I am generally so focused on surviving life that I forget to live it sometimes.

Day 2 in South Beach… Soaking in the reality of where we were

When I arrived in Miami it took me several days to kick back and start enjoying life.